The news with Rayman Legends continues as a developer who worked on the title expressed his feelings on a forum called Meristation Zonaforo. While it’s written in Spanish, it translates into the excerpt attached below. This is something that must be read:

I completely understand you but you have to understand one thing. This is not a decission taken by the development team, this comes from really really high up, so please don’t pick on the game. If you’re pissed, imagine how we feel. Think on the situation, we’ve been making overtime with this game practically since May preparing E3, and then almost a demo per month (gamescon, Wii U presentation, shops, eShop, etc…) and at the same time trying to actually finish the game. We had a first delay because it was obvious we couldn’t finish on time but we gave it all to be there on February. What face do you think we had when the week we had to close the game we’re being told it’s not going to be released? I couldn’t believe it.

For practical matters, you’ll have to wait for some months for the game to be released and will most likely serve for more content to be added and do it better. For us, this means we’ve spent 6 months barely seeing our wifes, kids, and friends for nothing because, after all, such a haste wasn’t needed. Believe it, it was a hell to swallow these news.
Even then I’m firm in what I said back in the day, Rayman Legends is an excellent game and will still be, and the team that’s making it doesn’t deserve to have your back turned on them just because some men in ties one day took a wrong choice. This industry is really that shitty

When you hear a developer describe the situation in that way, it’s incredibly disheartening to hear that they put all the crazy amount of work to only be told it won’t release now until September. While I’ve been reading many responses amongst the Uplay Miiverse community, many stating that they’re boycotting the game now, it still shouldn’t sway your opinion into not buying it. Doing that would hurt the developer more than the publisher. Regardless, Ubisoft has really hurt their image much more than they could possibly imagine with this “business” approach.

However, to make things more interesting, Nintendo-Nation is pointing the finger at Microsoft for this delay from an interview with European Xbox boss, Chris Lewis, that they came across on Eurogamer. The reason? Well, their terms on releasing games for the 360 sheds some of that questionable reason:

“We’re a little biased, so obviously we’re going to look to protect our own space as best we can and get exclusivity,”

“Whilst I can’t be specific about the terms and conditions, you can be very confident we seek to maximise our own advantage to ensure the playing field is even, and certainly plays to our advantage wherever possible.

“As you can also imagine, our partners have to be mindful of the relationship they have with all platform holders, and they need to be equitable. But there are contractual situations where we get agreement with different people to do different things, and through what we have available on Xbox Live, we are able to offer things other people can’t offer, that allows that exclusivity and unique elements to it that might not otherwise be available elsewhere.”

“Titles for Xbox 360 must ship at least simultaneously with other video game platform, and must have at least feature and content parity on-disc with the other video game platform versions in all regions where the title is available,”

“If these conditions are not met, Microsoft reserves the right to not allow the content to be released on Xbox 360.”

While this interview was back from August of 2011, and was pertaining more towards the PSN at the time, it’s fair to believe that it would hold true toward Nintendo’s new console. If this was the case though, Ubisoft could have made some sort of an agreement to still continue the game’s release on February 26th. While some have said that Microsoft is in partial blame for this, it still ultimately comes down to Ubisoft’s illogical decision that’s to blame here. Overall, Ubisoft has raised red flags amongst many gamers with a very poor business decision that not only screws Wii U owners, but their image as a publisher as well.

What are your thoughts on the situation? Sound off in the comments below!